Jellyfish
Jellyfish was a robot which competed in Series 9 of Robot Wars, built by Dave Lawrie who competed in the previous series as part of Team Nuts. After initially falling in the first round, it was reinstated following the withdrawal of Rapid, and collected a victory over Sabretooth, despite not qualifying for the Heat Final. Design Jellyfish was armoured in HDPE plastic, and sports a comical design, featuring googly eyes and colourful spots. The design is loosely based on a jellyfish, hence the name. Its weapon was a horizontal clamp, partially inspired by that of BattleBots middleweight Huggy Bear, also adhering to the restrictions of the team's available parts, which included a power source of sealed lead acid batteries, making Jellyfish the joint-final robot to compete on the show with lead acid batteries. Jellyfish ran on a two-wheel drive system, but has a high ground clearance at the rear. Depending on its setup, Jellyfish weighs between 85-95kg. Before building Jellyfish, Dave Lawrie, as shared on his team's Facebook pagehttps://www.facebook.com/diegracefullyrobotics/posts/1761007527547265, prepared a checklist of requirements for his robot, with the goal of making it simple, inexpensive, and good for TV. Jellyfish met these requirements, having been constructed using readily available parts. The Team Jellyfish was entered into Series 9 by Team Die Gracefully Robotics, captained by Dave Lawrie, who had previously competed in Series 8 with Nuts. In the first round, Dave Lawrie was joined only by his wife Gemma, although his brother Tim was also part of the team in their VT, despite being unable to attend filming. During the second round, Dave Lawrie was rejoined by his former teammates from Series 8, Rory Mangles and Alex Shakespeare, after their robot Nuts 2 had already been eliminated. Ahead of Series 10, Dave Lawrie welcomed Craig Croucher onto his team, alongside podcast creator Sam Elliott, but the team would ultimately not appear in the series. Qualification Jellyfish applied for Series 9 through online applications, having entered the build process before the applications went live, and it was selected to compete in the series. Ahead of Series 10, Dave Lawrie upgraded his robot with the help of his new teammates, and named the robot Jellyfish and Ice Cream, but the team were not selected to compete in the series. Robot History Series 9 Jellyfish competed in Heat 1, fighting Nuts 2, Rapid and Terrorhurtz in its Group Battle. However, despite encountering no issues in testing prior to the battle, Dave Lawrie quickly noticed that Jellyfish was suffering from radio interference issues in the arena, and proved challenging to drive. When the battle began, it was immediately scooped under and thrown against the wall by Rapid, before being collected by Terrorhurtz. Jellyfish lingered close to the wall as Rapid pushed it over the Flame Pit, with Terrorhurtz getting underneath and axing it close to the Arena Tyre. Again, Rapid got underneath and pushed Jellyfish around the arena and into Terrorhurtz, before flipping it again. Jellyfish withstood an axe blow from Terrorhurtz as it escaped the empty CPZ, before attacking two of Nuts 2's minibots. It was then pushed into another CPZ and flipped over by Rapid once again, where it lost an eye and was left unable to freely drive inverted. After some time, Jellyfish was counted out, and initially eliminated alongside Nuts 2. However, following Rapid's withdrawal due to damage sustained in its battle against Aftershock, Jellyfish was reinstated to take its place in the Head-to-Head stage, as a result of it outperforming Nuts 2 in the aforementioned Group Battle. With Rory Mangles and Alex Shakespeare from Team Nuts joining the team in the pits and control room, and two protective plates attached to its top panel, Jellyfish faced Terrorhurtz again for its first Head-to-Head battle. In the opening seconds, it embraced Terrorhurtz as the latter rammed and axed it, losing its eyes and protective plates in the process, before being steered round and slammed into the wall. These attacks immobilised Jellyfish almost immediately, which was counted out as Terrorhurtz axed it one more time. Jellyfish scored no points as a result of this defeat, and sustained damage to its speed controller as well as having the magnets in one drive motor shattered by the force of Terrorhurtz's axe. Jellyfish, assisted by Team Nuts, needed to find the damage caused by Terrorhurtz, which was not immediately obvious. Once this repair was made by installing a spare speed controller offered by Team RPD, Jellyfish was ready to battle Sabretooth in its second - and last - Head-to-Head. Jellyfish required a knock-out victory in order to equalise Sabretooth and Terrorhurtz on points, and have a chance of securing a place in the Heat Final. At the start, Jellyfish grabbed Sabretooth and pushed it around the arena, using its clamp to prevent Sabretooth from driving away effectively before Sabretooth hit its side with its drum. Jellyfish momentarily launched Sabretooth off its wheels as the latter drove up one of its sides, before steering it towards Sir Killalot's CPZ. Sabretooth escaped by driving over Jellyfish's top, with Jellyfish again pursuing Sabretooth as it got caught on the pit panel. After a brief hesitation, Jellyfish clamped Sabretooth again, spinning it around in circles and steering it close to the Flame Pit. Again, Sabretooth escaped by using its drum to launch itself on top of Jellyfish, but got stuck on one of its rear poles as Jellyfish pushed it back onto the pit panel. Both robots became stuck on the pit as a result, with Sir Killalot coming out of his CPZ to separate them as they struggled to drive free. Eventually, both Jellyfish and Sabretooth got stuck together again and moved no further as 'cease' was called, and the battle went to a Judges' decision. The Judges voted 2 to 1 in favour of Jellyfish, awarding it two points and fourth place on the Head-to-Head leaderboard. As a result, Jellyfish did not score enough points to progress to the Heat Final, and was therefore eliminated from Series 9. Results |} Wins/Losses *Wins: 1 *Losses: 2 Series Record Jellyfish sketches.png|Jellyfish's drawn design Jellyfish testing.jpg|Jellyfish pushes a tyre in testing jellyfish gateway.png|Jellyfish enters the arena during Series 9 Jellyfish enter the arena.png|Jellyfish approaches the arena NOTE: Craig Croucher was part of the intended Series 10 team, after previously competing in the Series 8 pilot with Tanto, as a member of Team Immersion. Croucher was not selected to compete in Series 9 with Neutron, as a member of Team Nebula. Outside Robot Wars Following Jellyfish and Ice Cream's unsuccessful application for Series 10, Dave Lawrie sold its components and decided to retire his former team, Die Gracefully Robotics, from robot combat. He since formed a new team with Sam Elliott and Craig Croucher, who co-built Two-Headed Death Flamingo, a two-wheeled robot built on a budget of £1000.https://www.facebook.com/FlamingoRobot/posts/1593931024002934 For more information on Two-Headed Death Flamingo, refer to Team Nuts. Dave Lawrie competed in the 2019 series of BuggleBots with Shark Setrakian, a shark-themed robot with multiple weapons. After getting caught on the arena floor, Shark Setrakian was destroyed in its first fight against Wajoo, before having two of its wheels torn off against Phoenix in the losers melee, eliminating it from the competition. Sam Elliott is the creator of the YouTube podcast series RoboCast, which regularly interviewed Robot Wars teams on the subject of the reboot episodes. For more information on Craig Croucher's robots, see Neutron. Trivia *The mascot on the team's shirts is a cartoon jellyfish called Bloop, accompanied by a social media slogan #OneMachineGoesBloop. *Prior to Robot Wars, both Dave and Gemma had competed on the BBC game show Total Wipeout, where they first met. *Jellyfish is the second robot in the main competition to place fourth in the Head-to-Heads while still having won a battle; the first being PP3D in Series 8. However, it was the only robot to do so upon being reinstated. **This also made Jellyfish the only robot within Series 9 to place fourth in the second round despite winning a battle. *Although Jellyfish and Ice Cream did not qualify for Series 10, footage from its application video was used in a trailer for the series. *Jellyfish and Ms Nightshade were the final robots to compete on Robot Wars using lead acid batteries for their power source. *Jellyfish was one of four robots to win their last Head-to-Head battle before being eliminated from that stage in series which used the round-robin format. The others were Terrorhurtz, TR2 and Eruption. *Jellyfish was the only robot in Heat 1 of Series 9 not to appear in another episode or series. References External Links *Die Gracefully Robotics Facebook page (defunct) *[http://www.robotwars.tv/competitors/season-9/week-1/jellyfish Jellyfish on the Robot Wars website] *Two-Headed Death Flamingo Facebook page Category:Robots with Mascots Category:Robots from Northern Ireland Category:Robots with Pincers Category:UK Series competitors Category:Robots which debuted in Series 9 Category:Robots which only fought in Series 9 Category:Animal Based Robots Category:Robots with Spears Category:Reinstated Robots Category:Robots with more Losses than Wins Category:Robots with Unique weapons Category:Robots whose final appearance was a win Category:Robots with Horizontal Crushers Category:Robots from Antrim